ising
superior to the prevailing barbarism, the second his command of
language, the third his rhetorical skill. As remarked by Gibbon, "he was
endowed with the rare and precious talent of raising the meanest, of
adorning the most barren, and of diversifying the most similar topics."
This gift is especially displayed in his poem on the downfall of
Rufinus, where the punishment of a public malefactor is exalted to the
dignity of an epical subject by the magnificence of diction and the
ostentation of supernatural machinery. The noble exordium, in which the
fate of Rufinus is propounded as the vindication of divine justice,
places the subject at once on a dignified level; and the council of the
infernal powers has afforded a hint to Tasso, and through him to Milton.
The inevitable monotony of the panegyrics on Honorius is relieved by
just and brilliant expatiation on the duties of a sovereign. In his
celebration of Stilicho's victories Claudian found a subject more worthy
of his powers, and some passages, such as the description of the flight
of Alaric, and of Stilicho's arrival at Rome, and the felicitous
parallel between his triumphs and those of Marius, rank among the
brightest ornaments of Latin poetry. Claudian's panegyric, however
lavish and regardless of veracity, is in general far less offensive than
usual in his age, a circumstance attributable partly to his more refined
taste and partly to the genuine merit of his patron Stilicho. He is a
valuable authority for the history of his times, and is rarely to be
convicted of serious inaccuracy in his facts, whatever may be thought of
the colouring he chooses to impart to them. He was animated by true
patriotic feeling, in the shape of a reverence for Rome as the source
and symbol of law, order and civilization. Outside the sphere of actual
life he is less successful; his _Rape of Proserpine_, though the
beauties of detail are as great as usual, betrays his deficiency in the
creative power requisite for dealing with a purely ideal subject. This
denotes the rhetorician rather than the poet, and in general it may be
said that his especial gifts of vivid natural description, and of
copious illustration, derived from extensive but not cumbrous erudition,
are fully as appropriate to eloquence as to poetry. In the general cast
of his mind and character of his writings, and especially, in his
faculty for bestowing enduring interest upon occasional themes, we may
fitly compare hi